autotelic pursuits

A long-standing theme in my writing explores finding the joy of learning things for the sake of learning things, of diving deep into your curiosity and letting it guide you for its own sake. And yet, I hadn’t found a word for this idea.

This is the love a hobbyist brings to a hobby. This is the dedication a hacker brings to exploring an interesting problem. This is the drive the artist brings to push their understanding of the material they work with. This is the journey of the writer who finishes their 15th draft of a manuscript as a story flows and mutates endlessly through their mind. They each do this based on an intrinsic motivation, a deep drive to create for its own sake. I could not describe the common thread among all these people all this time. Or at least, I could only describe it indirectly in so many words. That is until I recently discovered the word autotelic.

The word comes from the Greek words autos and telos, meaning “self-end” or “self-goal.” In his book Finding Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes an autotelic person as one who is deeply curious, internally driven and doesn’t depend on external rewards but acts for one’s own sake. Not only do I think this is a beautiful idea, but I love this word I hadn’t found until recently. Autotelic curiosity is the essence of play. I’ve come to appreciate this playful creation deeply—the type of play I like to call our dance with the universe.

Goethe once said, “Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.”

How we spend our time is so important. True wealth in life comes from our time spent in autotelic pursuits.